Cisco Social Media

Cisco has been driving some fundamental changes to transform how they engage with customers. We have previously interviewed Pascal Lendermann, Head of Operations & Digital Services EMEAR at Cisco a few months ago on how Trovus is helping Cisco add science to eth art of marketing. This time, we caught up with Alex Montuschi, Digital Performance Manager EMEA at Cisco, who is specifically looking at implementing a new way of using social analytics & selling as a part of their overall got to market strategy.

Click here to download the PDF version of this expert interview.

Digital Transformation: What it means for Cisco 

Fanni: Before we talk about ‘social’, can you explain to our readers why Cisco introduced ‘digital transformation’ in label of its marketing department?

Alex: This is simply because all processes are becoming more digital, including marketing. It is becoming increasingly hard to distinguish between traditional marketing and the more contemporary methods. As a result, we are transforming the whole company, not just marketing.

Fanni: Social media has been around for a while now, what has changed in the last few years for you?

Alex: Before, everything used to be website centric. Web was at the core of the engagement. Now, ‘social’ is in the driving seat. It is important to see that this is no longer only about students. Our target audiences are senior decision makers, such as CIOs and CXOs. We have done a lot of research about their buying behaviour which shows—what one would expect—that they are very time poor and decisions within a ‘mobile’ environment. As a result, they require information to be short and concise and this is where social media is becoming extremely beneficial. The era of reading lengthy white papers is over.

The funnel is in focus of the campaigns

Fanni: What impact does this have on your campaigns? 

Alex: Over the past year there has been more focus on analytics and intelligence to create full visibility over our customers’ behaviour patterns. Marketing is putting a lot more emphasis on the concept of ‘integrated journeys’ across various channels and various stages in our funnel. We spend a lot of time looking at how to tie top-of-funnel metrics with bottom-of-funnel results, tracking each point in the customer journey across paid, owned and earned.

Fanni: So what role does social media play in this integrated approach?

Alex: We are using ‘social’ for various components. On one side, Social listening enables us to track trends, get feedback on products, pick up on what people are saying about our brand and then to use this to enhance what we offer. On the other side, social selling enables our sales people to connect with customers and nurture relationships further down the funnel.

Fanni: This sounds like that social listening must have a huge impact on how you generate content?

Alex: Absolutely. The content team is going through a lot of changes. It isn’t enough anymore to share the same content as you publish on your website. The concept specifically needs to be designed for social consumption, just think about infographics or short videos as an example. The whole idea is to allow readers to understand the core message in a few seconds.

Fanni: Moving on from social listening to social selling. What role does social selling have in your go to market strategy?

Alex: When talking to our sales teams, it is proven that customers are more educated than before. Studies have shown 57% purchase decision is complete before a customer even calls a supplier and the buying journey is increasingly happening online. As a consequence, it becomes extremely important to nurture relationships through various media channels. We are working with a selected number of sales people to use a form of social selling. Sales reps leverage their own professional brand and social network to gather insights and connections, then use this information to discover new opportunities and get business done. We have created our own Cisco Selling Index to measure what’s the social impact and effectiveness of each sales rep. this gives us and the sales teams a good idea on the level engagement and sales we generate through social platforms.

Fanni: How receptive were your sales teams when they were faced with social selling?

Alex: There was a mixed response as one would expect. We have implemented an element of gamification, where we established a point gaining system for particular activities. You can see a league table of the best performers and it seems to be working extremely well.

Though the real game changer will be when we will be able to prove the real impact of social media on converting to deals.

Value attribution

Fanni: Now that you mention proving the value in social, let’s talk about value attribution. How do you measure the effectiveness of your social media?

Alex: At present, we can only make an attribution to the last click to action. Because social media is never the last touch point, currently we do not attribute any value to it. To be able to attribute the real value of each tactic, we are in the process of mapping all the touch points of the customer journey. We know technology and data are enabling us to do this but it does take some time to make sure all available datasets are integrated. Thanks to advanced data analytics and technology we are very close to creating full visibility over customer journeys (including known and unknown customers), which will enable us to attribute value to each touch point, including social media.

The future of marketing for Cisco 

Fanni: What is your vision for the future of marketing teams?

Alex: Nirvana would be to achieve true ‘one to one’ marketing. Technically this is now possible once you have the real- time data and dynamic content.

Fanni: Thanks Alex, to wrap up your interview with one final question...If you could have one thing, what would it be?

Alex: A single customer view across all channels and devices. We are within reach of having the right tools to achieve this.

Digital Transformation: What it means for Cisco 

Fanni: Before we talk about ‘social’, can you explain to our readers why Cisco introduced ‘digital transformation’ in label of its marketing department? 

Alex: This is simply because all processes are becoming more digital, including marketing. It is becoming increasingly hard to distinguish between traditional marketing and the more contemporary methods. As a result, we are transforming the whole company, not just marketing.

Fanni: Social media has been around for a while now, what has changed in the last few years for you?

Alex: Before, everything used to be website centric. Web was at the core of the engagement. Now, ‘social’ is in the driving seat.

It is important to see that this is no longer only about students. Our target audiences are senior decision makers, such as CIOs and CXOs. We have done a lot of research about their buying behaviour which shows—what one would expect—that they are very time poor and decisions are within a ‘mobile’ environment. As a result, they require information to be short and concise and this is where social media is becoming extremely beneficial. The era of reading lengthy white papers is over.

The funnel is in focus of the campaigns

Fanni: What impact does this have on your campaigns? 

Alex: Over the past year there has been more focus on analytics and intelligence to create full visibility over our customers’ behaviour patterns. 

Marketing is putting a lot more emphasis on the concept of ‘integrated journeys’ across various channels and various stages in our funnel.

We spend a lot of time looking at how to tie top-of-funnel metrics with bottom-of-funnel results, tracking each point in the customer journey across paid, owned and earned. 

Fanni: So what role does social media play in this integrated approach?

Alex: We are using ‘social’ for various components. On one side, Social listening enables us to track trends, get feedback on products, pick up on what people are saying about our brand and then to use this to enhance what we offer. On the other side, social selling enables our sales people to connect with customers and nurture relationships further down the funnel.

Fanni: This sounds like that social listening must have a huge impact on how you generate content? 

Alex: Absolutely. The content team is going through a lot of changes. It isn’t enough anymore to share the same content as you publish on your website. The concept specifically needs to be designed for social consumption, just think about infographics or short videos as an example. The whole idea is to allow readers to understand the core message in a few seconds.

Fanni: Moving on from social listening to social selling. What role does social selling have in your go to market strategy?

Alex: When talking to our sales teams, it is proven that customers are more educated than before. Studies have shown 57% purchase decision is complete before a customer even calls a supplier and the buying journey is increasingly happening online. As a consequence, it becomes extremely important to nurture relationships through various media channels.

We are working with a selected number of sales people to use a form of social selling. Sales reps leverage their own professional brand and social network to gather insights and connections, then use this information to discover new opportunities and get business done.

We have created our own Cisco Selling Index to measure what’s the social impact and effectiveness of each sales rep. giving us and the sales teams a good idea on the level of engagement and sales we generate through social platforms.

Fanni: How receptive were your sales teams when they were faced with social selling?&

Alex: There was a mixed response as one would expect. We have implemented an element of gamification, where we established a point gaining system for particular activities. You can see a league table of the best performers and it seems to be working extremely well.

Though the real game changer will be when we will be able to prove the real impact of social media on converting to deals.

Value attribution

Fanni: Now that you mention proving the value in social, let’s talk about value attribution. How do you measure the effectiveness of your social media?  

Alex: At present, we can only make an attribution to the last click to action. Because social media is never the last touch point, currently we do not attribute any value to it.

To be able to attribute the real value of each tactic, we are in the process of mapping all the touch points of the customer journey. 

We know technology and data are enabling us to do this but it does take some time to make sure all available datasets are integrated.

Thanks to advanced data analytics and technology we are very close to creating full visibility over customer journeys (including known and unknown customers), which will enable us to attribute value to each touch point, including social media.

The future of marketing for Cisco

Fanni: What is your vision for the future of marketing teams?

Alex: Nirvana would be to achieve true ‘one to one’ marketing. Technically this is now possible once you have the real- time data and dynamic content. 

Fanni: Thanks Alex, to wrap up your interview with one final question...If you could have one thing, what would it be? 

Alex: A single customer view across all channels and devices. We are within reach of having the right tools to achieve this.

The image below demonstrates proposed social media KPIs